درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

A connection has long existed between tourism and spirituality. More specifically, travel for spiritual purposes has for centuries been a popular manifestation of human mobility. Pilgrimage and other spiritually-motivated travel is widely considered to be one of the earliest forms of tourism and nowadays, religious tourism, in all its forms, has evolved into a major sector of the global tourism market. Over the last three decades, however, an alternative perspective on the tourism-spirituality relationship has emerged. Focusing on the meaning or significance of contemporary tourism, it is argued that tourism is a sacred journey, a secular spiritual experience; in other words, tourism has become a secular alternative to the institution of religion, the contemporary tourist a modern, secular pilgrim. Hence, a conceptual divide exists in the relationship between tourism and spirituality, between spiritual (religious) tourism and tourism as spirituality (religion).  Moreover, that divide is evidenced in much of the extant research into tourism, religion and spirituality.                 As this paper suggests, however, such a conceptual divide over-simplifies the relationship between tourism and spirituality; not only is the distinction between spiritual / religious tourism and tourism as a secular spiritual experience becoming increasing fuzzy – some traditional religious travel experiences, for example, are taking on the aura of commoditised tourism products, with implications for the experience of participants themselves – but also the relationship can be viewed from different disciplinary and theoretical positions. A humanistic perspective, for example, questions the notion of spirituality itself, whilst varying interpretations of religion / spirituality also cast the relationship in different lights. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the complexity of the spiritual dimension of tourism. Reviewing the extant literature, it highlights the dimensions of and limits to research into the relationship between tourism and spirituality and, exploring the phenomenon from a variety of perspectives, challenges contemporary understandings and points to areas demanding further research.  

Place is major element of tourism activity, and therefore most tourism programs are based on that criterion. One of the main goals of tourism planning and management is assisting tourists in order to achieve deep understanding of a destination. In this regard, the way in which Place is being studied and interpreted plays a crucial role in realizing the goal of tourism. Landscape Science, as an objective-subjective phenomenon, introduces new ways to interpret place and landscape based on which tourists receive information about place and also enter a Holistic World described by landscape literature. This paper reviews education and training methods and investigates tourism as a knowledge system that is able to discover the latent meaning of the place. Adopting the landscape tourism approach is therefore a prerequisite for the perception of the meaning of places.  

This paper highlights key characteristics of the current mindset identified as responsible for increasing costs (private and public) associated with tourism industry expansion globally. It then identifies common elements of an alternative paradigm, contrasting its features with those of the established paradigm. It then identifies the implications of the new mindset for the attitudes and behaviour of major stakeholders in tourism-government/destination management organisations, operators, and tourists, as well as researchers. Unless a good proportion of individuals in each of these stakeholder groups change their attitudes and behaviour, no paradigm shift will succeed and the ‘business as usual’ scenario for tourism will prevail, along with its increasing social costs. The paper concludes by addressing the implications for behaviour by different groups of stakeholders.